Page 13 - LD215 History of the Church in Africa A4 final

CH A P T E R 1

Introduction

to

Church History

hristianity has been in Africa for approximately 2000 years.
John Mbiti, a Kenyan, writes, “Christianity in Africa is so old
C that it can be rightly described as an indigenous, traditional,
and African religion” (229). I will use scriptural and historical sources
to show that African Christianity had “a prominent role in the life and
expansion of the early church” (Sanneh 1983, 1).

There were those who predicted that with the collapse of colonialism
the Christian church in Africa would decline in number and would
become irrelevant; however, the opposite has occurred. The growth of
the Christian church in Africa during the twentieth century has been
phenomenal. Elizabeth Isichei observes:

The expansion of Christianity in twentieth-century Africa has
been so dramatic that it has been called “the fourth great age
of Christian expansion.” According to much-quoted, if somewhat
unreliable, statistics, there were 10 million African Christians in
1900, 143 million in 1970, and there will be 393 million in the
year 2000, which would mean that 1 in 5 of all Christians would
be an African. (1)

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